Social Book Cataloging Websites
There are four main social book cataloging websites where users share, review, and comment on books: LibraryThing, WeRead, GoodReads, and Shelfari. They are potentially good sources of information for users looking for rock fiction. However, except for LibraryThing, the sites don’t use Library of Congress subject headings. Instead members create their own subjects, called "tags." Each user can invent their own. So, a novel about rock and roll might be under "rock" or "rock n roll" or "rock and roll," or all three, or none of them. Even then, this won’t separate novels from nonfiction. The good thing is that the number of books categorized by any specific tag or group of tags will only grow as more users add more books and more tags to the site. Another advantage is that for any particular book, the site shows other books similar to that one that might be of interest to the reader.
LibraryThing
LibraryThing is the most useful of these sites. For each book, LibraryThing shows member reviews, recommendations, Amazon.com descriptions, awards, and quotes. The user reviews are substantial. You can search for such user-created tags as "rock and roll" or "rock groups" as well as search for combinations of tags (they call it a "tagmash"). The tagmash feature takes a while to generate results, and you must separate tags with commas and use quotes around multiple word tags. But the biggest advantage of LibraryThing is that it is the only site that uses Library of Congress Subject Headings. This is a big advantage as tags do not distinguish between fiction and nonfiction.
http://www.librarything.com/subject/Rock+music%09Fiction
23 novels, including juvenile and young adult works)
http://www.librarything.com/tag/rock+and+roll 3,685 works including nonfiction and manga
http://www.librarything.com/tag/rock+bands 243 works, including nonfiction and manga
GoodReads
Good Reads offers reviews, recommendations, tags (called "shelves"), and links to Amazon.com and OCLC. It has longer reviews and a list feature. Site members can create their own lists of books, and each book has links to all lists featuring the book.
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/480.Epic_Rockstar_Stories 8 novels
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/3328.Tin_Pan_Alley 20 novels
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/608.Teen_Books_that_Rock_ 52 Young adult novels
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/199.Musical_Fiction 12 novels
http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show?shelf=rock 74 books, including nonfiction
http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/music 7,345 works of all kinds related to music
WeRead
WeRead offers reviews, recommendations, tags, and links to Amazon.com and OCLC. However, the reviews are typically only a few lines or less, and you cannot search by tag, which is a distinct disadvantage. You have to find a promising tag already attached to a book and click it to see all books with that tag.
http://weread.com/tag/rock+music+-+fiction?entity_type=book 18 novels, all juvenile
http://weread.com/tag/music%2C+pop?entity_type=book 208 works, includes nonfiction
http://weread.com/tag/musicians?entity_type=book 984,includes nonfiction
Shelfari
Shelfari offers reviews, recommendations, tags, and user-submitted quotes, summaries, and brief character summaries. However, reviews are very short, and you cannot search by tag.
http://www.shelfari.com/books/tags/rock%20and%20roll (124 books, includes nonfiction)
http://www.shelfari.com/books/tags/rock%20star 19, includes nonfiction
http://www.shelfari.com/books/tags/singer (84 books, includes nonfiction and authors with the name of Singer.